If notice be needed of their continuing importance, then the figures from Morrissey's explosively successful 'Autobiography' should suffice.

Currently plotting a new album via Harvest, Morrissey sat down with Billboard recently for a rare interview. The topic of reformations was broached - and, more specifically, that of The Smiths.

"I don't know a single person who wants a Smiths reunion!" he said. "But, no, there aren't any bands I like to see again because your memory of them is how they were in their prime or at their best or at their most desperate, and you look to them to be someone that they no longer are."

Morrissey also spoke about his health troubles during 2013. "Well, I'm expected to see Easter," the singer joked. "It was a bad year. I was in hospitals so frequently that the doctors were sick to death of me, and there's nothing more ageing than lying in a hospital bed, trying to recover from hospital food."

Continuing, Morrissey added: "If your illness doesn't kill you then the hospital food sees you off. That's what it's there for. Anyway, it was my time to go to pieces. Much overdue."

Meanwhile, erstwhile Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr is currently working on his own set of memoirs. Popping past the NME Awards, the songwriter was asked if he had read Morrissey's own hefty tome: "I don't know about you, but I've got a lot of books to get through."